BY ALBERT AMATEAU | In a tragic highway accident, Morris Faitelewicz, 58, a longtime Lower East Side civic leader, his wife, Beth, 54, and their intended son-in-law, Yehuda Bayme, 31, were killed on Monday afternoon Sept. 7 returning from a Labor Day weekend in the Catskills.
The couple’s daughter, Shani, 27, who was engaged to Bayme, and the Faitelewiczes’ sons, Yaakov, 29, and Ani, 23, were seriously injured when Morris lost control of the car, which rolled over several times on Route 17 in Sullivan County.
Morris, who celebrated his 33rd wedding anniversary with Beth in June, was renowned for his long years as a volunteer in a Hatzolah unit, ES 17, a Jewish emergency medical service team on the Lower East Side.
A first responder to the Sept. 11, 2001, World Trade Center attack, Morris was commanding officer of the New York Police Department’s auxiliary volunteer emergency medical service rescue unit at Ground Zero. He supervised other E.M.S. teams in the area for almost nine months. Beth Faitelewicz was a registered nurse at Beth Israel Hospital.
In June 2002 Morris earned the Port Authority’s Exceptional Service Award for his work at Ground Zero, and in September 2002 he earned a New York City Council proclamation honoring him and his unit for work at Ground Zero on Sept. 11 and during the months that followed. He was citywide coordinator and deputy inspector of the auxiliary police’s rescue unit until his death.
State Assemblymember Sheldon Silver said he knew Morris for 40 years. They were neighbors in the Grand St. co-ops and both worshiped at the Bialystoker Synagogue.
“Our community mourns the devastating loss of Morris and Beth Faitelewicz and their future son-in-law, Yehuda Bayme,” Silver said. “Morris spent most of his life in the Lower East Side community and he was dedicated to making sure the quality of life in this community was as good as it can be.”
Stu Loesser, a former neighbor of the Faitelewicz family who was a spokesperson for Mayor Bloomberg, said, “Beth and Morris didn’t just lend a hand to help Downtown recover from Sept. 11; they put everything they had into helping Lower Manhattan and the city come back.”
A member of Community Board 3 for more than 20 years, Morris served as a vice chairperson of the board about five years ago.
Herman Hewitt, a veteran C.B. 3 member who is the board’s first vice chairperson, said health and safety were always Faitelewicz’s key issues on the board.
“He’s always been a person who is very dedicated to his community, especially in terms of his work with the auxiliaries and his emergency service,” Hewitt said. “He was 100 percent dedicated to that.”
As for where Faitelewicz fell on the issues, Hewitt said he voted with the Grand St. group, which has always tended to be “more conservative” than the rest of the community board.
“He was always considerate to people during discussions,” he said. “He was honest in telling you exactly what he feels about it.
“He was a really, really considerate, great person. I never had any issues with him. If there were disagreements, it was always on the issues and nothing personal.”
The funeral for Morris and Beth was Wed., Sept. 9, at the Bialystoker Synagogue.
Hewitt, who attended, said the place was packed with what he estimated were around 300 people, plus more people in the streets outside.
He said he saw Judy Rapfogel, Silver’s chief of staff, but that it was so crowded, there may have been other local V.I.P.’s there that he just didn’t see.
On his Facebook page Faitelewicz posted a photo of his father, a Holocaust survivor, sitting in a doorway in Dachau concentration camp wearing prison-style striped pants, shirt and cap. His father and mother emigrated to the U.S. in 1950.
The funeral for Yehuda Bayme was the following Tuesday at the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale. Raised in Riverdale, he had recently moved to the Lower East Side.
State police in Wurtsboro said the accident happened around 4:30 p.m. Sept. 7 on State Route 17 near Exit 112 in Mamakating Township.
“The vehicle, occupied by six family members, was returning to New York City after spending the weekend at a resort in the Ellenville area,” according to a police statement.
“Based on the initial investigation the vehicle was traveling eastbound in the driving (right) lane and attempts to move into the passing (left) lane. An uninvolved vehicle was already in the passing lane, so the vehicle’s operator quickly steers back into the driving lane. The operator overcorrects the steering and leaves the roadway off the right shoulder. The operator again overcorrects the steering to the left causing the vehicle to overturn. The vehicle rolls onto its side, becomes airborne and rolls several more times before finally coming to rest,” said the police statement, identifying Morris Faitelewicz as the operator.
Congressmember Nydia Velazquez, whose district includes the Lower East Side, paid tribute to Morris in a statement the day after the tragic accident on the floor of the House of Representatives.
With reporting
by Lincoln Anderson
